Super Bowl champion Seahawks already focused on next year

NEW YORK — Coach Pete Carroll’s mantra of “Always Compete” doesn’t come with exceptions, such as “until the Seahawks win their first Super Bowl.”

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson (3) hoists the Lombardi trophy after a 43-8 win against the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., on Sunday.(DEAN RUTZ/SEATTLE TIMES/MCT)

No, even before the cheering had died down at MetLife Stadium on Sunday in the wake of Seattle’s 43-8 win over Denver in Super Bowl XLVIII, the Seahawks were talking about doing it again.

“The important thing when you leave this game of football is the legacy,” said receiver Doug Baldwin, who led Seattle with five catches for 66 yards and a touchdown. “We’ve accomplished one goal. But if you want to be the best of the best, you’ve got to do it multiple times. So we’ve already said it. We are going to win this one, and what’s next is winning another one, so we are already on to that one.”

In fact, Carroll said the expectations for next season — specifically, trying to become the ninth team to repeat as Super Bowl champs and first since the 2003-04 New England Patriots — would be laid out when the team met back in Seattle on Tuesday.

“We’ll take this in stride, and we’ll have a big celebration on Wednesday in town (the planned parade in Seattle) and enjoy the heck out of it. Everybody will enjoy the heck out of it. We won’t miss the fun part of it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t set our sights on how this is going to go.

They would be surprised if it was anything other than that.”

Look at the roster
And the good news for the Seahawks is that their roster is constructed in a manner that means most of the key pieces of this year’s team could be back next season.

Of the 53 players on the active roster for Sunday’s game, only 13 are unrestricted free agents.

Two more are restricted free agents, notably Baldwin, meaning Seattle could match another team’s offer or get a draft pick back if the player departs.

Given the team’s present and presumed future, all would probably like to stay. But inevitably some will receive other offers that the Seahawks might consider too rich to match. The team has been said to make re-signing Bennett, who blossomed into a dominant player this season, a priority.

Seattle could also look at cutting or restricting the deals of some veteran players who make big money, allowing them to spend on other players on the roster or in free agency, notably defensive end Chris Clemons (due $9.6 million next year), tight end Zach Miller (due $7 million) and receiver Sidney Rice (due $9.7 million and still rehabbing a knee injury suffered in October).

The rest of Seattle’s youthful core — the team was the second-youngest to win a Super Bowl and the seventh-youngest at the end of the NFL season — is under contract.

Wilson under rookie contract
The Seahawks, though, could seek to extend the contracts of a few players, with NFL.com reporting over the weekend that Seattle will make it a priority to sign safety Earl Thomas to a new contract before the 2014 season, as it did last year with Kam Chancellor. (NFL.com reported that for now, Seattle might not do that with cornerback Richard Sherman, salary-cap considerations playing a role.)

Continuing to give the team massive financial flexibility is the fact quarterback Russell Wilson remains under the terms of his initial rookie contract, which will pay him just $662,434 next season, and cannot seek a new deal until after the 2014 season.

“I think we are in a very fortunate situation,” Carroll said Monday. “(General manager) John Schneider has done an extraordinary job of structuring this roster contractually and with the vision of looking ahead so that we can keep our guys together.

“One of the things that happens every so often is teams have a big fallout after they win the Super Bowl. We’re not in that situation. We’ll be battling and competing. We don’t need to be in that situation. We’ve done that with foresight with looking ahead so that we would be prepared, and we’ll go back to work eventually. I guess it’s in the springtime when we kick it back in high gear, but the guys will start a lot sooner than that. We’ll get going (with the) next challenge.”